CSIS and Toronto Police believe Canadian politicians exposed to PRC blackmail in underground casino: Sources

YRP allegedly captured digital evidence from casino network tied to “Team Trudeau” fundraising and election interference investigations

During the pandemic Canadians were awed by images of heavily armed tactical officers raiding 5 Decourcy Court, a $10-million, 53-room villa in Markham, Ont. stacked with deadly weapons and over a million in cash, the proceeds of an opulent “palace” offering spa and gambling pleasures to wealthy clients, according to York Regional Police (YRP).

“The money moving through these underground casinos leads to huge profits for criminals that fund other ventures such as prostitution and drug trafficking,” YRP stated in September 2020, adding detectives believed patrons received brothel service inside the 20,000-square-foot, marble-floored mansion.

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China forces all high school pupils to do military training

All high school pupils in China will be forced to undergo mandatory military service under a new law on “defence education”.

The law, which will end a nationwide debate over what is already a common practice, also proposes drills for middle school pupils — aged 12 to 15 — and says that defence education should be part of the syllabus even for primary school children.

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Israel’s Newest Security Threat – Is the US Next?

The Iranian-orchestrated Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 — which resulted in mass rapes, the murders of 1,200 men, women, children and infants; taking more than 250 hostages and firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities — has shown that China, which Israel might have thought was an ally, turned out to be, sadly, more of an enemy.

China refused to condemn Hamas and its terrorist invasion of Israel, choosing instead to condemn Israel just a week after the massacre and before Israel had even launched its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

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CSIS warns that Chinese-backed interference isn’t going anywhere in latest report

As the dust settles on the landmark findings of the foreign interference inquiry, Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that China likely will back more meddling campaigns and expand its online pressure tactics over the coming year.

In its latest annual report, released Tuesday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remains “an enduring threat” to Canadian technology, democracy and diaspora communities.

“The PRC’s negative perceptions of select Canadian domestic and foreign policy initiatives may also drive more foreign interference, disinformation efforts and cyber activity in 2024,” said the report.

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Will China Soon Control Both Elon Musk and SpaceX?

At the end of April, Elon Musk at the last moment cancelled a trip to India, instead showed up in Beijing, and snagged a deal to rescue Tesla. The results were immediate: The shares of the electric-vehicle maker, which had been out-of-favor on Wall Street, soared on the news.

Now Washington has to be worried that China will control Musk’s other company, SpaceX, which is critical to America’s ambitions in space.

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Former B.C. MP has ‘lost faith’ after inquiry finds foreign interference may have cost him his seat

Former B.C. Conservative MP Kenny Chiu feels vindicated by preliminary findings from a federal inquiry that found foreign interference may have cost him his seat in the 2021 election.

Chui, who ran in the riding of Steveston — Richmond East, is calling on the Liberal government to follow through with its promise of a foreign agent registry like the ones established in the U.S. and Australia.

No one will go to jail. The only ones who won’t lose faith are the Liberals.

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From solar to EVs: How China is overproducing green tech

United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned China last weekend against overproducing clean-energy products such as solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles (EVs) in the race to slow climate change.

During a trip to China, Yellen said the country’s unfair trade practices — dumping artificially cheap products on global markets — were a threat to US businesses and jobs. Washington is considering imposing higher tariffs and closing trade loopholes if Beijing maintains its existing policy.

Chinese firms can often undercut their Western counterparts for many reasons, including cheaper labor and economies of scale. But they also benefit from very generous state incentives, which help to make foreign rivals uncompetitive.

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Foreign interference: Who knew what when? You’ll have to wait until the inquiry’s final report

Given an impossibly short deadline to complete the initial report of the public inquiry on foreign interference in federal elections – just two weeks from the close of hearings to publication – Justice Marie-Josée Hogue has elected to punt on some of the key questions she was expected to address until her final report at the end of the year.

That, at least, must be the hope. This first instalment is, perhaps understandably, largely a “what we heard” exercise, summarizing the evidence while for the most part withholding judgment on what it all means.

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Some 2019 candidates ‘appeared willing’ to engage with foreign interference: Hogue inquiry

A handful of candidates in Canada’s 2019 federal election “appeared willing” to go along with foreign interference schemes, a federal public inquiry has found.

Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue’s preliminary report, released Friday, concluded that while hostile states attempted to covertly influence the 2019 and 2021 general elections, those efforts did not change which party took power.

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Foreign interference a ‘stain’ on Canada’s electoral system, Hogue inquiry concludes

Foreign interference in 2019 and 2021 undermined the right of Canadian voters to have an electoral system “free from coercion or covert influence” and may have affected results in a small number of ridings, a public inquiry has concluded in the first of two reports.

While foreign meddling did not alter the overall outcome of those elections, Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, a justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, issued a call to action Friday for the government to vigorously enact measures to tackle this “malign” threat to Canadian democracy.

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Beijing’s Technology Theft in Canada Grows by the Day as the Feds Sit on Their Hands

What will it take for the federal government to deal seriously with Chinese technology theft?

I imagine everyone has heard the phrase “shooting the messenger.” This refers to a tactic where a person who receives bad news, or information that is unwelcome, decides to take his frustration and anger out on the individual who brought it to his attention in the first place. In other words, rather that deal with the consequences of the data and figure out mitigating strategies, just harangue the bearer of bad news. Not a great strategy in all honesty, but one that is used all too frequently.

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China Humiliated Blinken But Blinken Kept Begging

It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America’s top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay.

Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday. Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane.

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CSIS director says China’s concerted effort to steal Canadian technology is ‘mind-boggling

Canada’s top spy says China’s concerted efforts to steal cutting-edge Canadian technology is mind-boggling, and is designed to build the People’s Liberation Army as a formidable force against Western interests.

David Vigneault, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told MPs on the Canada-China committee Monday that Chinese hacking and other espionage activities have become a serious threat since Xi Jinping became president in 2012.

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FBI bypassed Trudeau government & directly told parliamentarians they were targets of Chinese hackers in 2021

A group of Canadian MPs and senators who belong to an international parliamentary alliance critical of the Chinese government say the FBI recently informed their organization that many in their ranks were targeted by hackers linked to Beijing.

They say the Canadian government never told them of this People’s Republic of China (PRC) cyberattack despite the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation passed on the information to foreign capitals in 2022.

Further evidence that Trudeau’s government is working for the ChiComs.

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Quebec Professor a Recruit of Chinese Talent Program Deemed Security Risk by CSIS

A Quebec professor is a participant of a Chinese talent recruitment program deemed by Canada’s intelligence service as a “serious threat” to Canadian research and intellectual property.

Changhui Peng, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) since 2003, joined China’s Thousand Talents Plan in 2010. His participation in the Chinese talents recruitment plan was highlighted on his online profile at the Northwest A&F University, a school in China’s Shaanxi Province, which specializes in agriculture and forestry.

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